the literary qualities of Mandeville's book than to his argument. Kaye called the book "possessed of such extraordinary literary merit" but focused his commentary on its implications for moral philosophy, economics, and utilitarianism. Harry L. Jones wrote in 1960 that the Fable "is a work having little or no merit as literature; it is a doggerel, pure and simple, and it deserves no discussion of those aspects of form by which art can be classified as art". Economic views Mandeville is today generally regarded as a serious economist and philosopher. His second volume of The Fable of the Bees in 1729 was a set of six dialogs that elaborated on his socio-economic views. His ideas about the division of labor draw on those of William Petty, and are similar to those of Adam Smith. Mandeville says: The poem suggests many key principles of economic thought, including division of labor and the "invisible hand", seventy years before these concepts were more thoroughly elucidated by Adam Smith. Two centuries later, John Maynard Keynes cited Mandeville to show that it was "no new thing ... to ascribe the evils of unemployment to ... the insufficiency of the propensity to consume", a condition also known as the paradox of thrift, which was central to his own theory of effective demand. Notes References External links Text of poem, with notes – in PDF format Hutcheson, Smith and the Division of Labor (commentary by Peter C. Dooley, University of Saskatchewan) Discussion of the work on BBC Radio Four's In Our Time'' 1714 books Economics books Satirical books 1705 poems British political satire 1714 in economics Preclassical economics British satirical poems